Summary
When Darien arrives at Bud's apartment that night, he is smoking and eating pizza on the couch. She asks him what's wrong and he tells her, "I've been played like a grand piano, by the master Gekko the great." Darien tries to comfort him about his part in the deal, and Bud resolves to dismantle Gekko's plan, even though Darien insists that Gekko will crush him if Bud tries to go up against him. "You're so close, you don't want to throw it all away!" she tells him, but Bud thinks they will be able to survive without Gordon Gekko.
"I'm not looking to just survive, I've been doing that my whole life!" Darien says, standing up, threatening to leave if he makes an enemy of Gordon Gekko. "I guess without Gordon Gekko's money I'm not such a hot investment anymore," Bud says to her, accepting her decision to leave. She warns Bud that having had money and lost it is much worse than having never had money at all. "That is bullshit!" he yells, furious, and when she leaves, he tells her he will change the locks. She leaves, upset.
We see the real estate agent complaining about the market, and Bud tells her to sell his apartment as quickly as she can. Next we see Bud arriving at work, and a secretary informs him that his father has had a heart attack, but he's in the hospital and he's alright. Bud immediately goes to the hospital where he's met with family members who reassure him that things are going to be okay.
in Carl's hospital room, Bud finds his father sleeping, hooked up to a machine. Lighting a cigarette, Bud greets his father, and tells him that he loves him. "I love you so much," he says, breaking down crying and apologizing for all the things he said. In his hospital bed, Carl begins to cry too, and Bud tells him he has a plan to save the airline, requesting to speak to the union members. Carl agrees and Bud kisses him on the forehead.
Bud meets with Bluestar management and tells them that Gekko is trying to destroy the company. He advises them to give Gekko no union concessions, which will lead Gekko to "jump ship and sell everything he's got." The Bluestar people are not so sure, and worry about another corporate entity coming in and doing what Gekko is already doing.
Looking to find a buyer who will revitalize the airline, Bud goes to Larry Wildman with a number of representatives from Bluestar. He makes a proposition to Wildman to buy the airline, and Wildman agrees.
The next day at work, Bud apologizes to Marvin and makes it up to him by giving him the tip to have all his clients buy Bluestar. He spreads the tip around the office, and prepares for Wildman to buy the company, leaking the news to the paper.
The next day, Gekko calls Bud, furious about the developments, and believing that the union members have leaked the news, not Bud. As Bluestar stock skyrockets, Bud instructs Marvin and the others to tell his clients to sell their stock right then. Bluestar representatives visit Gekko's office and confront him about trying to break up their company and he tells them to feel free to sell to another company that will do the same thing. Gekko, frustrated, abandons Bluestar.
Bud is on the phone with Wildman, who instructs him to buy the company when the stocks have plummeted a certain amount. He does, and Wildman purchases Bluestar.
We see Gekko at home as news of the Bluestar purchase is reported on a nearby television. He hears that Wildman bought Bluestar, realizing that Bud orchestrated the entire deal.
When Bud arrives at work that day, his coworkers look at him nervously. "Did somebody die?" he asks Marvin, who simply says, "Yeah." Lou pulls him aside and tells him, "A man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. In that moment man finds his character and that is what keeps him out of the abyss." In his office, Bud finds an attorney, a policeman, and some others, and gets arrested for fraud.
Bud cries as he is escorted out of his office by a policeman. The scene shifts to a little later and we see Bud meeting Gekko in the middle of a field in Central Park. He scolds Bud before physically assaulting him. In the process, Gekko talks about his own ties to insider trading, and beats him up. "I gave you Darien, I gave you your manhood, I gave you everything!" he yells, adding, "You could have been one of the great ones, buddy. I look at you and I see myself."
Bud replies, "As much as I wanted to be Gordon Gekko, I'll always be Bud Fox," and leaves. Bud goes to the bathroom at Tavern on the Green, where he hands over a tape recorder to the authorities, with a tape of Gekko's assault, and Gekko admitting to insider trading and teaching Bud everything he knows.
We see Bud in the car with his father. Carl tells him he did the right thing and offers him a job at Bluestar, but Bud insists that he's going to jail. He drops Bud off at the courthouse and Bud walks up the steps to learn his fate.
Analysis
Armed with the knowledge that Gekko is only in business for himself, Bud vows to take down the Gekko empire, planning to dismantle his boss' plans to sell out his father's company. In this section of the film, after Bud has learned about Gekko's plans, he becomes something of a modern noir protagonist, a grizzled and tortured man, smoking a cigarette late into the night, eager to clear his conscience and pick up the pieces of his past errors. Nothing anyone can say, not even the threat to leave him by his girlfriend, can dissuade him from his sense of duty to take down the man who wronged him. He becomes a lone wolf, a tortured man bent on justice.
When Gordon has his change of tune and decides to start going against Gordon Gekko, the film takes on a more melodramatic and retro tone. Particularly, the scene between Bud and Darien feels like a scene out of a pulp fiction or a gangster noir. As dramatic music plays, the couple argues about Bud's plans to make an enemy of Gekko, walking towards and away from one another to communicate the ways they are coming apart. The scene is just on the brink of corny, and the tone suggests a scene with higher stakes than simply a ruined corporate career. This genre play, whether intentional or not, pulls the viewer in further, and asks them to see Bud's decision as a simultaneously catastrophic and self-affirming one. He is giving up his beautiful girlfriend and his lavish lifestyle, but he is doing so on the strength of his principles and moral convictions.
While Bud's change of tune correlates with him coming into alignment with justice and his own sense of what is right, this does not mean he is a pleasant or particularly kind person. When Darien warns him about losing all his money, he becomes toxically furious, throwing a bottle at the wall and screaming at her. Bud's connection with his anger is tempestuous and disproportionate to the choices he has made, reflecting perhaps just how guilty he feels for having gotten so involved with dirty money. Charlie Sheen's hotheaded performance only further illuminates Bud's fall from grace and just how much he is struggling to keep it together.
Bud's decision to take down Gordon Gekko and show his loyalty to his father coincides with his father having a heart attack and ending up in the hospital. Immediately after selling his apartment and breaking up with Darien, Bud receives word of his father's condition. Bud is already contending with the pain he caused his father by intimidating him into agreeing to the Gordon Gekko deal, but he now must contend with the fact that his father's health is failing. Thus, Bud's redemption from having been corrupted by the corporate life is positioned alongside his reconciliation with his father and his father's physical recovery.
The end of the film is Greek in the scale of its drama, and the doling out of justice. After Gekko finds out that it is Bud that betrayed him, he is livid, indignant that his protege would betray him. The two meet in the middle of a field in the rain in Central Park. Dripping with rainwater, Gekko yells at Bud about the fact that he saw himself in the young stockbroker and they could have made a good team, beating him up all the while. Bud faces the repercussions of his corrupt dealings, and even though he has done the right thing in the eyes of the law, must face the legal consequences for all that he has done wrong. The ending is not a happy one, but a reflective one, in which Bud Fox must face all the repercussions for trying to game the system, and finally taking responsibility for his actions.
